Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Where the Crawdads Sing, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Survival, Necessity, and Violence
Independence vs. Human Connection
Education, Coming of Age, and Adulthood
Prejudice, Intolerance, and Acceptance
Summary
Analysis
Now 19, Kya sits on the beach and hears voices, so she slinks into the woods. From her hiding place, she sees Chase and his friends. Watching them from afar, Kya feels as if very little has changed since she was a child, when she observed this same group whenever they came near. At one point, the football that Chase and his friend have been throwing lands near the tree line, so Chase jogs over to retrieve it. Just before he throws it back, he looks up and sees Kya. After tossing it, he turns and looks directly into Kya’s eyes but doesn’t say anything. For a moment, they simply peer at each other, and Chase almost smiles before turning around and rejoining his friends. In the days after this encounter, Kya returns to the beach in hopes of seeing Chase.
Despite her hesitance to seek out new connections after having been hurt by Tate, Kya can’t help but gravitate toward Chase. This is most likely because he doesn’t tell his friends when he sees her, ultimately indicating that he doesn’t want to scare her away and, therefore, that he might be interested in pursuing some kind of relationship—either platonic or romantic—with her. That Kya can’t stop herself from trying to see him again in the days after this fleeting encounter implies that it’s quite difficult to live a life of total isolation, even for somebody like Kya who has every reason to be wary of others.
Themes
Kya starts going to Jumpin’s more frequently, hoping to encounter Chase. When this finally happens one morning, Chase introduces himself to her. He speaks slowly, as if she is perhaps unable to understand English. Eventually, he invites her to go on a picnic that weekend, and they arrange for him to pick her up in his boat. On her way back home, she recites several poems in her head, recalling one by an obscure poet named Amanda Hamilton, whose poetry was recently published in a local newspaper. This particular poem is about how love must be “free to wander.” It makes Kya think of Tate.
When Kya accepts Chase’s invitation to go on a picnic, readers see just how eager she is to connect with another human in spite of her previous resolution to never put her trust in anyone else. And yet, it’s possible that Kya isn’t breaking this promise to herself, at least not yet—after all, simply spending time with Chase doesn’t mean she will automatically fall in love with and open up to him. Furthermore, Kya appears cognizant of the human need for love, judging by the fact that she recites a local poet’s words about how it’s necessary to set love “free to wander.” In this period, then, readers watch as Kya slowly makes herself emotionally available to the world again, even if she does so cautiously and tentatively.
Themes
What Kya doesn’t know is that Tate actually did come to see her. He was unable to come on the Fourth of July because the professor who gave him a job in the college’s biology lab invited him to go birding, and he felt he couldn’t say no. Several days later, though, he motored through the marsh toward Kya’s shack. On his way, he saw her in her boat, so he turned off his motor and watched her, knowing that this is something she often did to him in the past. He observed her as she quietly looked for shells on the beach, but then she suddenly went stiff, listening to something Tate couldn’t hear, though he soon identified the soft hum of a distant motor. In response to this sound, Kya crept into the tall grass, obscuring herself and peering out like an animal.
When Tate comes several days late to visit Kya, he sees a side of her that he has always known existed but has never actually witnessed—namely, the instinctual and somewhat animalistic aspect of her identity, the part of her that enabled her to survive in the marsh as a mere child. Needless to say, this level of alertness is uncommon amongst humans, since most people don’t think much about surviving in the wilderness. In turn, it makes sense that Tate might be somewhat unnerved by Kya’s behavior, which seems more in keeping with a creature in the wild than with a human.
Themes
Unnerved, Tate can’t help but think of Kya’s behavior as odd and deeply out of the ordinary. He then considers the fact that his studies will lead him to a life as a research biologist in a lab, and though he knows that Kya’s intelligence would fit into such an atmosphere, he can’t imagine her actually fitting in anywhere except the marsh. Whispering that he’s sorry, he turns his boat around and leaves, cursing himself for being too cowardly to give her a proper farewell.
Even though Tate was originally drawn to Kya because he appreciated her unique connection to nature and the wilderness, he now finds himself making excuses for why he shouldn’t return to her. Afraid that she won’t fit into the life he hopes to lead, he decides to abandon Kya like everyone else in her life has, knowing full well that this is exactly what has made her so weary of other humans in the first place. In this regard, then, Tate’s decision to abandon Kya only feeds into the exact kind of behavior that he finds unnerving.
Themes
Get the entire Where the Crawdads Sing LitChart as a printable PDF.
